A “Dingy” Living Room Gets a Cozy, Cottagecore Makeover with the Most Stunning Fireplace
In home tours and Before & Afters over the years, Apartment Therapy has seen some extremely cozy living rooms — and this living room in Vicky Burton’s (@shelley_cottage) home is one of the coziest to date. That said, it once was “really dark and dingy,” as Vicky describes on Instagram.
“This room always had good bones, but the carpet had some suspicious-looking stains, the hearth had a huge hole in it, I had to stand on the windowsill to pull the curtains shut!” Vicky adds. A little bit of paint, new flooring, and some fireplace TLC made the living room totally charming.
White paint helps ditch the dingy vibes.
Vicky painted the room in Farrow & Ball’s Wimborne White, which immediately brightened things up. “I love how bright and fresh the room feels,” Vicky says. “It’s lovely and light in the summer but can be really cozy in the winter.”
In addition to the walls, Vicky and her husband also installed shelving on both sides of the fireplace and painted that in the same white paint color. Vicky’s best advice for picking a paint color is to “consider the direction the room faces,” she says. “This room is north-facing so can actually be quite dark. It’s why I went for a light warm white.”
Someday, she says, she’d like to give the shelving across the room a more built-in look and maybe paint it a different color and create a sort of reading nook.
“The floor and the shutters made the biggest impact.”
Although the white paint certainly helped, Vicky says the biggest difference-makers were the new LVT floors with black trim that mimic pine floorboards and the shutters across the windows — both of which were professionally installed and bring the room into the 2020s but keep a classic feel.
Before installing the LVT, professionals leveled out the floors with plywood.
The fireplace got a makeover.
Vicky repaired the aging fireplace by filling in the holes on the hearth, and she added vintage-inspired tiles. She also painted the fireplace white. “There was damp previously, but I applied a damp protective paint primer before painting, and it’s not caused any issues since,” she explains.
“I primed and painted the mantel pieces and then painted them in Mole’s Breath also by Farrow & Ball,” Vicky adds on Instagram. She finished the space with a dollhouse, a rocking hourse, and secondhand finds.
“With the exception of the dollhouse and rocking horse, it’s our adult space that we chill in most evenings,” Vicky says. “Most of the furniture is secondhand and is an electric mix of vintage pieces to give it a cozy cottage feel.”
For more cozy, cottage-inspired spaces, check out these 12 interiors straight out of a storybook.
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